Monday, March 03, 2014

Five Days of Normalcy

In the past two days, we've had several relatives call us to ask if "our house was floating". It was a joke question but they really were concerned that we were in danger from a major rainstorm creating "massive flooding"," mudslides", and all sorts of havoc all over the Los Angeles area. One relative, who lives in Colorado, was shocked when she saw a television news report showing a raging L.A. River in downtown Los Angeles.

We told them all to calm down. There's nothing special or unexpected going on. You see, from February 26, 2014 to March 2, 2014, a Pacific storm travelled through the West Coast of the United States. Los Angeles received 4.52" of rainfall over those five days. That's enough to turn the trickle of an L.A. River into a raging torrent for a few days. Other cities in California got significant rainfall as well. Despite what the news media is telling you, this is totally normal. Storms like this are common this time of year. Some years, we get many of them (2005 was the last year like that). Some, actually, most years, we get a few of them. And some years, we just get one or two, which is what this year appears to be so far.

The news media, by and large, has decided to be the weather service and devote more and more time to embellishing every weather phenomenon. They even name regular storms now instead of just hurricanes. This one just happened to be named "Titan". Never mind that cities are going bankrupt. Never mind that people are having hours cut and health insurance taken away. Never mind that the IRS and other agencies are going way beyond their boundaries. Never mind that the military is getting chopped to pieces. Never mind all the scandals going on.

Apparently, a moderate-sized storm dumping a rather average amount of rainfall on California is big news and supersedes all that other stuff. By the way, the news media has made a huge deal of it being cold and snowy in the eastern half of the U.S. this winter. Next thing coming will be an unexplained swell of warmer weather at the end of March leading to melting snow, rising rivers, and flooding.

They might as well devote an hour tomorrow to the Sun rising in the east.